So what I know so far is that people in rural areas vote Republican while urban dwellers vote Democrat. And also that workers, tradesmen and carpenters tend to vote red while white-collar employees and professionals vote blue.
Now, in large cities like NYC, LA or Chicago you also have people of the working class, like construction workers, car mechanics, electricians etc living and working there. Do they tend to vote conservative or liberal?
23 comments
They don’t vote. I work construction and most of the people I talk to don’t vote. If they’re political they usually vote red. They’re the typical fuck Biden/dnc type. Majority of people I talk to just aren’t political. From what I gather though they would lean heavily right on cultural issues.
I live in Orange County though which is right leaning so it might be completely different in say Los Angeles county. I’d bet it would be pretty similar though. These aren’t the type of people to vote imo.
My employees are mostly blue collar, and I would say they definitely lean right. I don’t know if they actually vote though.
[deleted]
Everyone votes Democrat in Chicago, whether they want to or not.
Back when I worked a union job, most people didn’t vote and the few that did probably voted Democrat. The union would always endorse a Democrat. There were surprisingly few open republicans.
Although my experience might be an outlier because the missouri Republican Party is a bunch of psychopaths that routinely ignore the will of the people and try to pass right to work laws. And the union I worked in was really good so these guys did not want that.
Heavy red voters in the south.
Everybody in cities tends to vote Democrat, regardless of race, class, religion, etc.
Suburbs are mixed. The richer tend to vote Dem, the blue-collar tend to vote Republican.
Rural areas are mostly Republican regardless of class, race, and religion.
I mean blue collar work can be split up in a lot of ways. Unionization, ownership structures, public service, ect. are all factors that can change it as well as the fact that large urban areas are usually democratic, while lots of blue collar people live in exhurbs in places like LA and those places have different views.
From my experience the blue collar guys vote more center-right or populist.
The reason white collar people tend to vote more liberally is because economic issues really don’t bother them as much as people who live paycheck to paycheck. They can focus more on social issues, which the democratic party focuses more on.
In LA, I feel like a lot of blue collar workers are just straight up politically disenfranchised. Many have conservative leanings. Some aren’t very politically active, but are mobilized by Democrats and the left wing. Particularly recent immigrants. An example being all the May Day parades in the past where you’d see a lot of recent immigrants carrying mass produced political signs.
A lot of the American blue collar (regardless of ethnicity) workers I notice tend to be pro-union while socially conservative.
But I think a lot of the working class in LA don’t feel a lot of political efficacy and aren’t that involved. They might largely vote Democrat because of tradition. Or likely don’t vote at all.
The discourse of LA politics is mostly dominated by the transplants and the white collar (?) industries. Entertainment, tech, real estate, development, etc. That’s why I think LA has trended a lot more towards progressives and left-wingers in the last decade. They’ve a vocal minority, but have a big impact on local politics and elections. At the lower level of governance like district and neighborhood councils, DSA has been somewhat influential in recent elections.
But the actual groups that run politics in LA are a world away from the blue collar folks that keep the city moving.
I work in HVAC, most I know in the trade lean right, despite being in a medium sized city in California.
Can’t say anything about the ironic union representation without being attacked but yes big city blue collar workers are statistically more democrat.
Blue collar workers who have good experiences with unions tend to vote Democrat more often. Blue collar workers that have no or poor experience with unions tend to vote republican more often.
That’s not a perfect representation ofc, just a general one.
Blue collar me and 90% of my friends all vote conservative. Honestly I’ve never known a Mexican that didn’t vote Republican.
It is interesting. I live in what is considered a deeply red state that is quickly becoming purple and has always had a few democratic strong holds.
A lot of folks I talk to have very strong opinions on candidates and parties, but when you start talking to them it is clear their values don’t always align with their states affiliations. It has lead me to really, truly believe people get more invested into their labels and “identity” than actual politics
My dad is like this, and it’s really fascinating. He considers himself a republican and hates the Clinton’s on a weirdly personal level and does not see a political for future for AOC. If you bring up socialism he has some quip about nazi’s being socialist.
But since we were little he talked about the importance of building up the infrastructure, building the middle class, putting people to work, and most importantly to ALWAYS be wary of corporate greed.
For literal decades he has waxed poetic about a paint factory moving across the border to escape regulation and how wrong and immoral it is.
Now that we are older and talk policy, when you strip politicians and labels away he is in agreement that healthcare is a right, billionaires are running amok, and that there needs to be more government regulation. He dislikes Biden but agrees Trump was the worst choice. When you ask who you as the best choice he can never offer up a better candidate that was viable during the election. I am not saying Biden was the best choice, but he just defaults to Biden wasn’t the right choice without any reason why.
If I criticize a republican president (looking at you Reagan), he is scandalized; until your bring up the specific reasons why and he concedes that, yeah some things were big mistakes. God forbid you bring up dirty words like socialism.
He just isn’t ready to let go of the label or identity he thinks he should have, and it is very apparent he cannot escape his generations perspective and traditions. He cannot fathom any other way of thinking or values. It is incredibly frustrating.
I feel like you’re kind of mixing a lot of different terms/groups into one.
A union electrician and the guy doing food deliveries on a scooter at 11PM, have basically nothing in common in terms of the backgrounds of who is likely to be working those jobs or their respective socieoeconomic positions, but they’re both “blue-collar” jobs.
Depends if they’re in a union or not
Depends on the person, if they’re pro-union then dem, if not then rep
Depends on the race and gender of the person
I actually don’t vote for a party, I vote for the candidate. But I am blue collar and have mostly voted Republican for most of my voting life.
I’m not indicative of the demographic that you’re asking about, but I am of it: I vote split ticket.
I sit down with the voter’s pamphlet and leaf through the options while filling out the ballot. If I’m curious about certain things I look em up.
I don’t really have much choice in who I’m voting for, though, seeing as I live in a democrat stronghold, so regardless of if I vote with nuance or not, it’s usually gonna be whichever dnc candidate that runs.
I should pay more attention to the results, but I’m pretty busy and the bleeding hearts here aren’t actually interested in fixing anything; they just want to say they want to.
They might have back in the Clinton era, but not anymore.
Like him or not, Trump made a huge push to bring white blue collar workers completely into the fold of the Republicans, regardless of union status.
The union that is exclusively blue is always the teachers union.
>And also that workers, tradesmen and carpenters tend to vote red
I’ve been a journeyman tradesman since 1995. Most of my fellow trades workers voted democrat, especially if they were union members.